As data centers become a bigger part of facility management, managers are responding by addressing present and future needs for colocation services and future needs for services.
Forty-five percent of U.S. enterprise data center managers say cost is the biggest challenge in migrating to colocation, followed by security and internal staffing.
All of this is according to an online survey conducted by Vertiv, a power management solution provider, formerly known as Emerson Network Power. Respondents indicated that future IT application deployments will become more diverse and complex and that they seek colocation providers that can quickly scale capacity when needed, provide edge connectivity and offer price transparency.
Key findings from the survey include:
Colocation popularity is surging and will continue to rise
65% of respondents said that their organizations are using colocation data centers or will use them over the next two years.
Colocation providers must prepare to meet new demand
57% will increase their use of colocation in the next 12 months.
Colocation providers must be able to quickly support customer scalability
Improving capacity scalability is the number one reason customers move to colocation, followed by carrier diversity and latency, so providers must ensure flexibility in their IT and infrastructure deployments.
Security challenges and costs are huge barriers to the adoption of colocation services
Almost half, 45%, of respondents cited cost among their top three challenges in moving more applications to colocation, while 31% cited security concerns and 18% cited internal staffing constraints.
